The Journal
by Kex3
Summary: When Mokuba buys a Journal for his brother Seto Kaiba, Seto is less than thrilled. All it will do is make his problems, nightmares, and horrors that much more fresh and vivid. It's a terrible idea, but he promised Mokuba he'd write every night. But he's afraid that he'll only get worse if he does. Rated M for disturbing images and scary situations in later chapters. Please review.
1. Entry One: The Journal

Let's start off with something simple enough for you to understand. There are certain things I don't want people to know about me. I don't want anyone to understand me. Anyone who gets too close to me, emotionally, finds themselves in a place that inevitably forces them to hate me and regret ever wanting to know the truth. It's simply better to keep everyone as far away from me as possible. It's just simpler this way. I would rather someone hate me without knowing, than knowing and hating. It hurts too much.

Aha, so the great and powerful Seto Kaiba does have feelings. I hate myself for having feelings. Because of feelings it only causes me to care more, lose more, and love more with the never ending horror, the only truth that everything is lost in the end. In the end, we're all alone. I'm pretty sure that was a line in a TV show my little brother watches. It's unfortunate how true that line rings in my head everyday when I wake up and every night when I try to fall into a restless sleep.

My little brother's name is Mokuba. He bought me this stupid journal because my personal doctor let it slip that I'm falling into a spiraling depression. If that's what he calls it. There are several other ways I could word it, but that would be too long to list. I personally think of it as my own private hell. A place where I can feel nothing, see nothing, hear nothing, and be dead to myself and everything around me.

This is Mokuba's way of forcing me to open myself up to my own private horrors. If he knew half of them he would have known better. He would never have wasted his money to buy me something that will only cause me more pain. But he's only twelve years old. He doesn't know any better. Some things are better left unsaid.

When the doctor, Suzuko, found out about the journal, he made me promise to write in it every day before bed. I'm only writing this now because Mokuba made me promise. Any promise to Mokuba must be kept. That was a promise I made to myself when I was only eight.

Unfortunately, because of that last promise, I have to lie to Mokuba, breaking only one promise I made to him. That I would always tell him the truth, no matter how painful it may be. But like I said, some things are better left unsaid. He's too young, and will never be old enough. I'm not old enough, and yet it is _my_ past and my nightmares.

I have nightmares. Mokuba is afraid of them. They started three years ago, when I was fifteen. At first, Mokuba thought the mansion was haunted. But when he told me the morning after, about the screams and the scratches on the walls… Well. He found out very quickly what the truth was. Now he will never let me sleep alone. Late at night when he thinks I've just drifted off, he climbs into my bed and hopes that it will somehow keep the nightmares at bay. Sometimes it does. But sometimes, the results of the night are too ghastly to discuss. Let's just say I locked the door to my room for a week following. But then Mokuba found another way into my room through the air ducts. His constant worrying over me was what finally began to keep me sane at night. But I'm not saying they stopped.

That's the worst part, I suppose. This journal is for me to record how I felt during the day, what happened, how I responded. That's a _living_ nightmare. I've had a photographic memory since I was five. I remember every single touch, smell, thought I had, and everything everyone else said. I remember my elbow touching my coffee cup before heading off to work; I remember one of my rivals, Jonouchi Katsuya, whispering to the King of Games and my number one rival, Yuugi Motou, how upset he was that he hadn't studied the night before the big test. I remember circling every answer to the same test: A, C, B, D, A, A… etc. It was a long test so I'll spare myself the writing. I remember the smoky scent that lingered around the teacher's lounge. I remember the view from the school roof on a cloudy gray afternoon, and what the people below on the street were wearing as the passed by, unaware they were being watched. But those are just little things.

It's only remembering every tiny, miniscule, painful detail of a traumatic past that revisits every moment of every day at the slightest trigger… It's a curse. It also doesn't help to constantly feel the aftershocks of my nightmares for hours on end; still feeling monsters tiny sharp claws and razor teeth, chewing, biting, and clawing at my insides, doing everything in its power to destroy me from the inside out. To put it on light terms, it's torture. It feels like poison constantly being injected to my main bloodstream. The screams always in my eardrums. Sudden death would be a blessing, a sweet gift that no one would be kind enough to give.

Mokuba is the only thing that keeps me going. He is the only reason worth living. Abandoning him now would cause all my previous torments in life to be in vain. That is unacceptable. And for that reason, and that reason alone, I continue to go on. Even if I have to keep writing in this pointless journal.

That's all I have to say for this entry.

**~((~^*^~))~**

Please review. Tell me what you thought and if you would like me to continue. Writing this is just like filling out a diary entry. If I were to continue this as a story, it would be extremely fast updates.

Thank you.

-Kex3-


	2. Entry Two: Distractions

I don't know if it's just me, since I'm not exactly normal, but whenever night falls it feels like every thing I've ever done all crashes in on me at once. Every action, reaction, consequence, bad decision, every thing that I shouldn't have done or wish desperately that I could change somehow... I wonder if somehow our lives would be better than this. Better than back then…

But when I actually stop and try to figure out what it would mean if I were to change those things in my life… if I had made a different decision… Our lives would actually be worse. The biggest change however, would be my existence in this world, or not. And that's what sends my mind reeling until I can think of something else to distract me.

Suzuko and Mokuba have been trying to find things that will distract me. They say that burying my problems and hiding in my work doesn't count. They want me to do something creative, more active than sitting behind a desk filling out paperwork and typing all day. I don't see what the problem with that is. It's so much easier, and I'm good at it. But no, that will never be good enough for them. Suzuko even came up with this absurd idea that it's actually making me worse. Something to do with mental exhaustion and overworking myself. I wouldn't know if I do that. I'm too focused to care or pay attention to insignificant details such as those.

Anyways, Mokuba has been trying to drag me into the music room downstairs for over a week now. He wants me to start playing instruments. He says that he has a friend named… Serenity…? No… I can't remember her name. Shizuka? Whatever. Mokuba says she plays her flute whenever she gets upset or sad. But there is no way I'll play the flute. Mokuba says I don't have to. He just wants me to play music. He knows I can play piano and a little bit of guitar.

But whenever he sits me down in front of the piano, I just stare at it. No matter how hard I try I can't bring myself to press a single key. It's a similar feeling to being petrified. I think it has something to do with hours of tutorship for something I never even wanted to play in the first place. And the tutor was old. She had one of those sticks, so if I messed up, she'd hit my arms. She wouldn't hit my hands under threat made by Gozaburo. He didn't want people to see marks.

Mokuba tries to help me. He sits next to me and plays the few songs he knows. They're childish lullabies. But I never taught Mokuba to play the piano. So what else could he play?

I must have heard him play "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" a thousand times. But for some reason I can't bring myself to dislike it. If anything, I'm always enraptured by his simple playing. There's something so innocent and beautiful about the way he plays. Free of torment, free of crushing expectations, free of _everything_. And he's sitting next to the most disturbed being on the planet, and he can't even see it.

Mokuba then smiles at me like I'm the most brilliant person on earth, and I find myself hitting the concrete again.

To make a long story short, they haven't been able to make me play music.

I got a call from Mokuba's school yesterday. They told me that his grades were so good that he can go on a special field trip with the rest of the students with good grades. I know Mokuba wants to go. I can't stop him, and won't. But at the same time I can't stop thinking about that will mean for me. If he's not around, my nightmares will come back with a vengeance. I know what it was like whenever Mokuba wasn't there. It makes me shudder just remembering them, and I start to hear whispers in my head telling me that I'll be dead before the night is over. I can't stop myself from believing it.

I've been keeping this silent fear to myself. I don't want Mokuba to worry about me. That should be Suzuko's job, but Mokuba still takes it upon himself if he even suspects something's wrong.

Lately I've been suspecting Suzuko wants to read this journal. I think the main reason he was so thrilled with Mokuba's idea is because it's another way to look into my head and find more ways to treat me. He's already put me on two different medications, and I have to take both once a day. At least it's not twice a day. But what I find the most annoying is that it doesn't do anything to make me feel any better, and it certainly doesn't help me sleep better. All it does is blur my thinking and makes it much harder for me to think with a clear head.

So lately I've only just been pretending to take the meds. They can't tell the difference, which only strengthens my feelings that it isn't helping at all.

Mokuba's coming. This is the end of Entry Two.

**~((~^*^~))~**

Please review and let me know what you think. It helps with my creativity and gives me a boost to keep writing for you all.

Thank you!

-Kex3-

P.S.

The next chapter will be called "Nightmares".


	3. Entry Three: Unescapable

**Title: The Journal**

**Rating: M—for disturbing images and scary situations.**

**Chapter Warning: This chapter is dark and somewhat disturbing. If you don't feel comfortable reading a story like this, please stop reading here. Thank you.**

**~((~^*^~))~**

I've noticed that the harder I try to avoid my problem, the more I hide from the darkness trying to destroy me, the worse it becomes. I don't know what to do about it. The only times it's almost unbearable is when I'm at home. I never have problems at Kaiba Corp. I think it has something to do with reminding me that I'm in charge, not _him_.

But when I'm at home, it's like I'm thirteen all over again. Confused, angry, and too scared to do anything. I feel like an animal, trapped inside a barred cage. Starving for freedom and unable to do a single thing about it.

Mokuba began to notice my worsening condition three days before his school trip. It took all of my skills to prove him otherwise, but even then Mokuba called Suzuko to check up on me. Like he wasn't going to anyway…

He'd be gone for a week. As I watched him wave at me through the passenger car window, I could already hear the whispers forming in the back of my mind.

_You won't survive… Without him, you're _nothing_. _I left without waving back.

I can't bring myself to doubt those lies. I feel that they're true. That it doesn't matter what I do. Without Mokuba, I won't survive. He is the only happiness in my world, the only thing that gives me life and forces me to keep moving every morning. Without that, I really am nothing. Nothing but an empty shell of my former self. But, that's what I really am, aren't I? An empty shell.

Suzuko called about an hour after Mokuba left. By that point the whispers were screaming all around me. I was unable to convince Suzuko to leave me alone. I tried to tell him I was fine and that I didn't need a doctor checking in on me all the time. He didn't believe me.

"Seto, you always say that. No matter how you really feel," Suzuko told me. I hate that he always calls me Seto. I never gave him permission. Once I had an outburst and demanded to know why he called me by my first name, and not so politely asking him to never do it again. His response shocked me.

"I'm not going to lie to you, Seto," Suzuko told me, and I knew this wasn't going to be good. "Mokuba actually recommended I call you by your given name. He convinced me that you have a duel personality."

"What is that supposed to mean?" I growled, still getting over the fact that my _brother _had given Suzuko permission.

"We call them the Seto and Kaiba Personas. The Seto version of you, is the one you were born to. You were Seto all the way up till your adoption. A young boy, loving, caring, feeling. A brilliant, normal, good child, and deeply committed to Mokuba."

"Isn't that who I am already?" I asked. That was who I was supposed to be, right?

"No. Mokuba pointed out you slip into another personality at work, in times of stress, and in your… episodes. Everyone calls him Kaiba." I cringed. Everyone calls me Kaiba, not Seto.

"Kaiba is ruthless, cold, unfeeling, angry, depressed, and lashes out at anyone who comes between him and his goal. Kaiba is seemingly unstoppable and has no emotional connections to any person or thing. He'll do anything to get what he wants. Anything."

After that I stopped listening to him. There was no point. It was all too clear to me by that point. I was not Seto. I was Kaiba. For years I believed 'Kaiba' was the best version of me, which was the person I _had _to be if I was going to give Mokuba the future he deserved. My thinking was Seto, but my actions belonged strictly to Kaiba.

Once I realized that my dreams and hallucinations became far worse. Just imagine your worst nightmare, the greatest horror you can think of, and multiply it by seven. I'll explain in the lightest terms what I see in my hallucinations.

Sometimes I'm walking through the house and minding my own business, when all the lights go out and I'm standing in a pool of blood. My blood. I hear the sound of my thirteen year old self screaming for help, and the cold laughter of the one who caused it. I hear the sounds of abuse, and the more I hear it, the more bloody the room seems to become, and the more my body burns in remembrance.

Every once in a while I'm reminded of a punishment he gave me. I'd run away for only a day. I came back and he locked me downstairs in a cell. He'd been working on a new chemical weapon, and toned it down several notches… to use on me. It felt like there were a thousand tiny monsters clawing at my insides, eating me alive from the inside out. Once I passed out while I was having a duel with Mokuba. I'd scared him half to death, but I was the one flirting with death's door.

But nothing compares to seeing _him _everywhere I go. He'll be waiting for me wherever I go; in the kitchen, the living room, my bedroom, the basement, the garden out back, he's everywhere. He rarely yells, he only talks calmly but with a deadly force that sends me running for cover. His threats still shake and haunt me to this day. I feel like I can read his mind. I know exactly what he wanted from me, I know exactly what he planned to do to me. I know exactly what he planned to do to Mokuba. And the moment he died Mokuba's life was spared. Mine was not.

Every day I feel 'Seto' slipping out from my fingers. Every day 'Kaiba' grows stronger. 'Kaiba', the shadow born from the torture _he _forced on me. I can't escape it, and I can't fight it for much longer.

I have no idea how much longer Seto will be able to survive.

**~((~^*^~))~**

A/N: Please review.


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